Newbie-how to insert music w/Proshow Gold 2.5-advice please

[pepomint]

Hi All,

I'm a newbie here. I found this site while searching for help on google. This is a great site for video editing help.

I'm sorry, but not sure if I am posting in the correct forum. I hope so since I'm new, but this is more so a music editing question.

I am hoping someone can help me. I did a search on Pro Show Gold 2.5 and found a user guide. It is very helpful since the "help" function in Proshow isn't the move informative. Wish they had a PDF file.

I tried to find answers on the forum to my question, but can't seem to pin point an answer on my topic. I registered and couldn't wait to put up a post hoping to get my question answered. I think everyone would be more familiar with this software than me.

Anyway...like I said, I'm a newbie with Proshow and I was doing my first slideshow for my mom last week. The transition things are working great, but when it comes to music, I'm stumped . I can plug in a music file for the slideshow, but I want to cut the music and edit in another song. Can I do this? How would I go about doing this?

Say a Celine Dion song is 4 minutes, I only want to use 2 minutes of it with a set of pictures. Then I want to fade it out and add in a Lionel Richie song for say 1 minute and then add in another song. Right now it's playing the whole Celine Dion song, but it doesn't match the pictures that I'm showing.

Can Proshow do this or do I need another audio editing program to mix my music and then save it and put it in my slide show? If so, is there a free software I can download to try?

Thanks in advance your help.

~Pepomint

[byteguy]

Despite the fact that you mention Celine and Lionel, I'll offer some help.

I don't have 2.5 but it is still based on 2.0... go to show->options->soundtrack. Add the songs you want in the order you want (top to bottom). Click on Celine and change the end time to 120 (total number of seconds that will play). To make her fade away, change the "fade out" just above that to something like 3 seconds. Then click on Lionel and change the end time to 60.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Just please don't use any Whitney.

It is really better to use crossfades (one gets quieter WHILE the other fades in). You can, sort of, do that by changing the offset on Lionel to -3 so it starts playing 3 seconds before Celine shuts up. But, I've had that add static during the transition. YMMV.

[pepomint]

Byteguy,

haha :P , remember this slide show is for my mom
so she likes Celine and Lionel, what can I say

thanks for your help, that's what I thought I should do and tried that last week, but couldn't get it to work. I figured it should work, but it didn't.

Any case, I will try it again tonight. and promise no Whitney

~ Pepomint

[pepomint]

Yeah, it worked!! Thanks Byteguy.

[byteguy]

Yeah, it worked!! Thanks Byteguy.

Glad to hear it worked. I usually create my slideshows in ProShow Gold but don't use sound. Instead, I'm always combining them with other video in EditStudio and just add all the music there.

Have to laugh at the music choices forced on us. I was doing a project for a School District and they were saying "we have the perfect song we want you to use." Got the run-around for a week and then they finally gave me the title; it was a really sappy Whitney Houston one (gosh, I hope she doesn't read these forums). I politely informed them that I had already finished the project using other music and assured them they would like it just as much.